Marc Myers writes daily on jazz legends and legendary jazz recordings

July 25, 2011

Wanna Buy a Record?

Last week, Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine sent along a fabulous YouTube clip of Wanna Buy a Record? The rare 35-minute film was made by Capitol Records in 1951 to explain how records were made and why they cost what they did (85 cents at the time). The film was for promotional purposes only and featured Mel Blanc [pictured] and Billy May along with executive Alan Livingston and assorted Capitol stars. The Capitol Recording Studios featured in the film was at 5515 Melrose Ave. and predated the famed Capitol Tower, which was completed in 1956.

A little historical perspective. In 1951, the so-called speed wars between Columbia and RCA had just ended a year earlier. Between 1948 and 1950, the record industry was in turmoil. After Columbia introduced the 33 1/3 LP, RCA refused to adapt the new format—despite Columbia's offer to give RCA the technology. Instead, RCA launched the 45-rpm in 1949 to compete with Columbia's LP. For more than a year, the industry and, more important, the consumer, had no idea which format would win. In the process, record sales plummeted as consumers did what consumers do: They stuck with what they already knew—the 78 rpm. [Record-store customer Billy May gets slapped around by store owner Mel Blanc]

But as RCA started to lose stars from its highly lucrative classical division to Columbia, the label accepted the LP while the 45-rpm was used for singles but largely ignored by Columbia. This Capitol film is important because you see the company at a crucial moment in its history trying to make a case for the new vinyl records of both speeds.

By the way, Alan Livingston [pictured] would sign Frank Sinatra two years later—before the company was sold to Britain's EMI in 1955. In 1963, Livingston also would be forced to release a record by an English quartet under pressure from the company's London-based owners. That quartet was the Beatles.

Capitol's president at the time was Glenn Wallichs, who had started his career in 1940 by founding Music City, shown in the early frames of the film. Also of note, Wallichs had assumed day-to-day control of Capitol by January 1951, with Johnny Mercer merely a holder of stock at that point and Buddy DeSylva, the third founding parter, deceased since July 1950, with his family holding his controlling interest.

Mel Blanc, of course, is the voice of Bugs Bunny and many other cartoon characters. Billy May was one of Capitol's leading big band arrangers.

Based on what you're about to see, it's inconceivable to me how how Capitol or any other record company could produce large numbers of records given the arduous manufacturing process. But they did.

By the way, I sense that all the extras are extra special. Some of them I recognize, but I'm sure many of you would love to contribute Comments identifying them.

Two more interesting films about how records are made, both from RCA, but in different eras:

1. The Sound and The Story:http://www.archive.org/details/SoundAndTheS
This details an RCA LP, from the recording session in Boston (this was an early stereo session, by the way, but the film concentrates on the mono LP as this was 1956 and stereo was the bastion of very elite customers with 2-track reel decks) to LP manufacturing at RCA's famous Indianapolis IN plant (where Mercury Living Presence records were also manufactured from 1951 into 1962).

2. Command Performancehttp://www.archive.org/details/CommandP1942
This film is from the later stages of the 78 era and shows an RCA Victor electronic-to-wax recording session in Camden NJ and then the disk manufacturing, at the same facility. You can assume that Victor and Bluebird jazz and swing records of the era were made in a similar fashion.

I never knew that Capitol Records had a recording studio (as in the film) on Melrose. I used to go in there when my friend worked at KHJ. It looked much the same in the lobby. It always struck me that the place was oddly configured for an office building and studios; pretty cramped.

I'm also wondering who plays "Dave", the song-plugger who played "Ivory Rag" for the Capitol A&R men. They mention Joe "Fingers" Carr as a possible artist. Over at Wikipedia, I learn that Carr, aka Lou Busch, did indeed record "Ivory Rag" for Capitol, but that it was his own composition. Could "Dave" be Carr/Busch? Going by the photo and 1910 birthdate listed in Wikipedia, I don't think so. He also looks a little heavyset to be Irving Berlin, unless Berlin put on weight in the ten years since he had appeared in "This Is The Army" (the only image of him I have to go by).

For myself, I appreciated the brief cameo by Capitol recording artist Yogi Yorgenson near the start of the film.

About

Marc Myers writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and is author of "Anatomy of a Song" (Grove) and "Why Jazz Happened." Founded in 2007, JazzWax is a two-time winner of the Jazz Journalists Association's best blog award.